Greek elite tax evaders hid €1.5b

Greece’s Financial prosecutors Grigoris Peponis and Spyros Mouzakitis confirmed last night that they believe some 1.5bn euros were hidden in an HSBC branch in Geneva by 1,991 public and political figures on the so-called Lagarde List. A separate charge sheet will be drawn up against every individual suspected of tax evasion ‘and other financial crimes’.

The prosecutors, who are conducting a preliminary investigation into the list, are expected to summon as witnesses political figures who handled the data, including former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Papaconstantinou. But opinion leaders in Athens scoffed at the idea of Venizelos having left the list unaltered during the two years it was in his possession.The previous day (Friday) Financial prosecutors Grigoris Peponis and Spyros Mouzakitis ordered SDOE)to conduct a full investigation into the list, which had been finally and formally
submitted to the financial prosecutors by SDOE chief Stelios Stasinopoulos two days earlier.

Says a long-term Athens source:

“The Lagarde list contains many big names from political and media circles. Soon the mainstream newspapers will also run a major story about a related scandal in which 3 members of New democracy are involved: the current President of the Parliament, an ex Minister, and another member of the governing party. In this case the three accused politicians helped a prominent entrepreneur to get €300m from the banks and then launder the money through his twelve offshore companies”.

But speculation remains rife in several European capitals as to why IMF boss Christine Lagarde leaked the list to Venizelos when she was still Minister of Economics in the Sarkozy government. One German source suggests that she did so knowing the list would embarrass Berlin – given some of the payments made to List-members involved the corrupt sale of submarines by Germany to Greece some years previously.

Equally open to conjecture is why Venizelos chose now to hand over the list, given that some prominent PASOK members are on it.

Stay tuned: the ripples from this could make some serious waves throughout the eurozone.

So what! Most countries have a similar arrangement for those with assets prepared to open a business ad hire locals including the US, Canada, Aus and I believe NZ. The whole point is country should be able to choose who it wants to live there. Better someone with £1 million to invest than another Romanian beggar!

Of course Britain is corrupt, just like Germany, France etc. If you don’t like corruption you can go to Finland, NZ or Singapore – according to Transparency International’s corruption perspectives index. The primary cause of death in Finland is boredom from insufferable smugness!

just try to buy your way into Germany or the Netherlands. Please do not make the common mistake all Englishmen abroad seem to make: they assume that because Britain is like that, so is the rest of the world. Wake up!

I will readily believe that a country like the US that spends so much on controlling immigration welcomes those who have enough to buy their way past the bureaucracy.

I must with you about Finland, there really isn’t that much given that there are more pine trees than mobile phones. They have nothing else apart from smugness .. !

Thanks for what I consider to be good news, I look forward to the next episode of this sordid drama. Laguarde of course made those infamous comments regarding the plebs not paying taxes, so one shouldn’t feel any empathy towards their children. It is ironic that through her earlier actions some of the real tax dodgers are now being exposed.

Hopefully this will prove to be part 1 of the past catching up on her, part 2 to follow later being her mismanagement of French banking.

I don’t suppose any of this will go down well with the general population who as a lumpen mass have been scapegoated as tax dodgers, despite the fact that most of those who still work are on p.a.y.e.

HSBC was aiding and abbetting Greek tax evaders to the tune of 1.5 billion euros in hidden assets. I bet that they will have another thorough investigation as to how this could have happened given their world leading compliance rules and will announce that it will not happen again, or something to that effect.
It does beg the question that if HSBC, a relative tiddler in the world of hiding assets, was hiding 1.5 billion Euros, how much was being hidden by the acknowledged Swiss maestros of hiding assets? Maybe as much as the total bailout perhaps?